Tucked away inside your sleeves -- 2.3
Sixty-two miles; Jinki/Taemin; PG-13
note: Meant to mostly write this as the way Taemin experiences things; somehow moved away from that more than I expected in this portion of the story.
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | int. i | 2.1 | 2.2 | part 2.3
Eight -- effacées
Haerim jutted a hip out at Taemin from behind the jumbo pack of toilet paper rolls she was hugging and the boy transferred the bags in his right hand to his left so he could fish for the key in her coat pocket. The grating of metal and the crinkling of plastic heralded their return; the droning of the fridge answered back. Taemin paused next to the shoe rack, one foot loose in his sneaker, and Haerim slipped in quietly after him.
They spent a few lengthy heartbeats staring at the pair on the couch. Jinki was sitting lopsidedly, cheek resting on his own shoulder, and Joohyo was wrapped up in a blanket like a roll of gimbap, making pillows out of her brother's thighs. Neither moved and Jinki had his fingers threaded through Joohyo’s messy hair.
Is he asleep?
A small voice wandered into his ear.
It took Taemin a moment to realize that the voice was too feminine to be his own.
But by then Jinki had opened his eyes and greeted them with a smile. There was tiredness etched into the familiar seam of his mouth, into the new crease in his eyelid that made his right eye slightly larger than his left. No haziness that spoke of sleep though; Taemin thought he could hear Haerim’s shoulders fall in disappointment. Jinki disentangled his fingers from Joohyo’s hair and gently shook her by the shoulder.
“Hyo, let me get up.”
The young girl stirred with a disgruntled groan and two arms emerged from the blanket, fastening themselves around Jinki’s waist. She snuggled closer and pushed her nose into her brother’s soft stomach.
“If you want to keep napping then let’s get you to bed.”
She made a series of incoherent noises and suddenly Jinki straightened his back and winced - ow, he mouthed - before moving to dislodge his newfound personal barnacle. Haerim came to his rescue. She stepped out of her shoes and past Taemin, raising the bags in her right hand and shaking them a little.
“I have japchae! And gimbap too, real gimbap.”
Her voice was a little too loud, a little too clear.
Jinki winced again when the fake gimbap drove her elbows into his legs for leverage in order to prop herself up and twist around. Joohyo blinked blearily up at Haerim, balanced precariously in place thanks to her brother’s hand on her back, entirely unaware that she could roll off at any moment.
“Gimbap?” The young girl echoed.
“From the supermarket?” Jinki frowned.
“I want ddeudegi…” Joohyo mumbled through a half-stifled yawn before a thought hit her and she quickly ducked her head.
“Yah, you ungrateful brat!” Haerim snapped with half-hearted annoyance but her expression spoke of other things. Of worry and of heartache. Because the younger girl couldn’t hide everything by lowering her face, couldn’t hide the aftermath of yet another morning spent crying herself back into a dreamless state of oblivion. Haerim’s eyes moistened as she turned to her brother; her smile stretched a bit wider and a bit thinner over her teeth. “Eunyoung’s mom gave me the food.”
“Oh, Auntie Yoo?” Jinki extricated himself from Joohyo and stood up.
“She makes the best gimbap.” Haerim beamed, relinquishing the bags and the toilet paper pack when Jinki reached for them. “You guys haven’t had the chance to taste it but she would always make some for us whenever I go over to Eunyoung’s house after school. The danmuji she uses is homemade!”
“Sounds delicious.” Jinki lifted the bags still radiating slightly with the warmth of their contents.
“There’s more than enough for all of us.” Her fingertips lingered against the white plastic.
“I’ll set the food out so why don’t you get Hyo washed up and dressed? She brushed her teeth after I woke her up but refused to do anything else.” He moved out of the way so Haerim could get at Joohyo.
“Alright you lazy bum, let’s go.” The older girl opened up her arms.
Once Haerim had half ushered half towed Joohyo out of sight, Taemin finally remembered to take his other foot out of his other shoe. He shuffled a few short steps into the living room, veering uncertainly towards the kitchen before veering back and ultimately stopping altogether under Jinki’s unblinking gaze. He croaked out a timid hi.
The older boy left the food on the coffee table and Taemin tensed reflexively as the distance between them disappeared. When Jinki was but a foot away, the toilet paper pack slipped from his clutch and he abruptly keeled forward. Taemin made a harsh strangled noise in his throat and attempted to catch the falling boy.
Before his fingers could reach Jinki’s arm, however, Jinki’s forehead had already landed heavily against the crook of his neck. The older boy didn’t speak but there was something about the slope of his back that whispered, please, just a moment, so Taemin let his hand drop back to his side. Yet as soon as his heart settled back into his chest, he became aware of the slow burning pain in his left shoulder. It radiated down the length of his arm and speared across his shoulder blades, extending up his neck and winding around his throat. He wished he knew what it was, what it meant. Was it from the impact of Jinki’s head? Was it from the weight of the grocery bags?
His fingers shone white as bone but his fingertips were red enough to bleed.
Jinki took in a slow steady breath, inhaling the scent of the fine drizzle still clinging onto Taemin’s jacket. Then he let his lungs deflate until it was physically impossible to push out any more air.
“She’s a very proud person, you know.”
While Jinki was setting the table, Taemin washed up at the kitchen sink. He rubbed his fingers forcefully together, again and again, till the tingling went away; the small tremor in his left arm remained though, no matter how hard he tried to hold still. As he dried his hands on a towel, he was aware that his skin had turned a deep pink from the too-warm water-a jarring contrast to that lonely spot of aquamarine.
He held up his trembling hand, running his index finger back and forth over his thumb nail.
Much of that streak of lacquer had already chipped away.
......
The drizzle that had started on Taemin and Haerim’s way back home never turned into full out rain, so that afternoon the four of them left the apartment without umbrellas.
The hospital was thirty-three and half minutes away by foot.
Haerim led the way, refusing to stay on the sidewalk and instead balancing herself with outstretched arms on the cement curb. But I’ve got the parked cars to protect me from traffic, she had reasoned when Jinki told her to stop, I’ll get off when we get to the bigger roads. Seeing that Haerim’s stubbornness was being indulged, Joohyo wordlessly followed suit, swaying a little more than her sister. Jinki took his hands out of his pockets and walked behind them, eyes never leaving their overlapping figures, ready to catch them (or Joohyo at least) at any given moment. Taemin brought up the rear.
That was how they made their journey, single file, through the gray streets.
It was a few days after their arrival that Jinki’s mother became stable enough for the doctors to allow them more than a fleeting glance from the other side of the glass doors. She’d been placed in a six-bed room of the ICU, sharing the space with five other silently sleeping (though they all knew it wasn’t sleep) occupants. Between the beds were faded blue-green curtains, drawn on occasion for some semblance of privacy.
As they stepped into the room, the nurses were just about finished turning the patients over in their beds. The four of them bowed in greeting and the staff smiled and nodded in return. One nurse took Jinki aside for a bit and he motioned for his sisters to go on to their mother’s bedside. With a glance over his shoulder, Taemin trailed after the girls.
He had accompanied them to the hospital before but this was only the second time that he had been allowed in. The sight of the fragile woman hit him no less hard than the first time and he wasn’t sure how many visits it would take to get used to something like this. So instead of intently studying her face the way the girls did even before their took up their positions, one on either side of her, he chose to stand a little ways behind Haerim at the foot of the bed, downcast eyes finding their way to two pale unmoving hands.
They were the hands that had raised these two girls. These two girls and that one beautiful, beautiful boy.
When Jinki rejoined them, he gave Joohyo’s outstretched fingers a squeeze before answering Haerim’s inquisitive look with a reassuring smile. “The doctor wants to see me so you guys stay here. I’ll be back.”
Haerim nodded.
Joohyo hung on for a little while longer before letting him go and burying herself nose-deep in the bleached white blankets. A few minutes of silence later, Haerim drew a shuddering breath and launched into her usual monologue. For every word she spoke, she rubbed a circle into those sharp knuckles, carefully avoiding the crosshatches of angry red scabs.
Hi mom…
Jinki came back to them a little paler, but he did nothing except shake his head when Haerim asked him in a dozen different ways what was wrong. Her frown of suspicion grew deeper and deeper until at last he, without his usual gentleness, shoved her head against his chest. Leaning over her, he gripped both her hand and their mother’s.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” The sound rumbled deep in his throat. After a moment, he added: “He just wanted to update us on how mom’s doing, that’s all. She still needs the ventilator but she’s a little stronger at breathing now. That’s something to be thankful for.”
“So are they going to give her a tracheostomy? She’s still breathing on an endotracheal tube and you said that’s bad if she uses it for too long right?”
“I don’t know.” He planted a kiss atop her head, mumbling distractedly. “Maybe. Soon.”
“And the feeding tube-” She touched her own nose.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” He released her from his embrace and ruffled her hair.
“But-”
“Don’t worry, okay? The doctors and nurses know what they’re doing.” His eyes dimmed a little in spite of the words rolling off his tongue. “They’ll make sure she’s okay. They will. That’s what they’re here for. We’ve just got to trust them.”
“She’s going to be okay, right?” Her voice was suddenly thicker.
“Of course.” He brushed his thumb over hers. “Of course, of course…”
“Hey, don’t be like this. Stay optimistic; think happy thoughts. Mom's here, isn't she? So why don’t you keep talking to her, hm?” Jinki set both of his hands on Haerim’s shoulders.
She obediently complied, picking up where she had left off, outlining the world that her mother wasn’t aware of, shading in the memories that she couldn’t make-how a young couple had accidentally dropped a container of tofu and was scolded by the lady at the free sample stand, how she had picked the shortest line but ended up waiting longer than the next one over, how the man in front of her had bought seven different kinds of ramyeon and five flavors of pepero...
Taemin can never quite paint out the same picture of Jinki’s expression from that time with words, because words weren't and still aren’t enough, because he hadn't understood it right then and there. As Haerim described how the ahjumma at the cash register had been wearing a cartoon rabbit hairclip that didn’t match her age at all, Jinki’s well-schooled features crumbled into something that looked like devastation. Like the world was ending. Like he was seeing it end.
…like - maybe, possibly - he was the one ending it.
His hands slipped from Haerim’s shoulders and he clasped them behind his back, except unlike Joohyo’s on the day of the funeral, his nail beds were colorless. Even more so as he dug a neat little row of deep, deep crescents into the flesh of his palm. The younger boy didn’t understand why but slowly he reached out, his fingertips barely managing to graze Jinki’s sleeve before the older boy’s hand suddenly clamped down around his. He jumped in surprise - at the motion, at the force, at the coldness - but he quickly pulled those fingers towards himself.
It's okay, hyung.
Taemin traded words of comfort for bruises, scribbling them across the back of Jinki’s hand in a language no one knew.
It's okay. I'm here...
......
____a/n: title is weird, sorry. :x on another note, I may am going to start cutting scenes. taem possesses a little more resolve but everyone else has undergone no perceptible change. /headdesk
Don't ask why jargon ended up in this fic. Forgive my giant run-on sentences too. (A rather belated request, yes. xD)
[definitions]
잡채, 김밥. Common enough I'll assume everyone knows what they are.
뜨데기. Another name for 수제비; a soup comprising hand-torn pieces of dough, vegetables, etc. Rainy day food!
단무지. Pickled daikon radish.
Mechanical ventilation. Endotracheal (through the mouth and down the trachea) is short term; tracheostomy (through an incision in the neck/trachea) is long term.
Enteral feeding. Nasogastric (through the nose and down the esophagus) is short term; gastric (through an incision in the abdomen/stomach) is long term.
The use of long term methods facilitates maintenance, reduces damage, lowers the risk of certain complications such as pneumonia, etc.
大好きだった 大好きだった »
......
2.4 i
note: Meant to mostly write this as the way Taemin experiences things; somehow moved away from that more than I expected in this portion of the story.
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | int. i | 2.1 | 2.2 | part 2.3
Eight -- effacées
Haerim jutted a hip out at Taemin from behind the jumbo pack of toilet paper rolls she was hugging and the boy transferred the bags in his right hand to his left so he could fish for the key in her coat pocket. The grating of metal and the crinkling of plastic heralded their return; the droning of the fridge answered back. Taemin paused next to the shoe rack, one foot loose in his sneaker, and Haerim slipped in quietly after him.
They spent a few lengthy heartbeats staring at the pair on the couch. Jinki was sitting lopsidedly, cheek resting on his own shoulder, and Joohyo was wrapped up in a blanket like a roll of gimbap, making pillows out of her brother's thighs. Neither moved and Jinki had his fingers threaded through Joohyo’s messy hair.
Is he asleep?
A small voice wandered into his ear.
It took Taemin a moment to realize that the voice was too feminine to be his own.
But by then Jinki had opened his eyes and greeted them with a smile. There was tiredness etched into the familiar seam of his mouth, into the new crease in his eyelid that made his right eye slightly larger than his left. No haziness that spoke of sleep though; Taemin thought he could hear Haerim’s shoulders fall in disappointment. Jinki disentangled his fingers from Joohyo’s hair and gently shook her by the shoulder.
“Hyo, let me get up.”
The young girl stirred with a disgruntled groan and two arms emerged from the blanket, fastening themselves around Jinki’s waist. She snuggled closer and pushed her nose into her brother’s soft stomach.
“If you want to keep napping then let’s get you to bed.”
She made a series of incoherent noises and suddenly Jinki straightened his back and winced - ow, he mouthed - before moving to dislodge his newfound personal barnacle. Haerim came to his rescue. She stepped out of her shoes and past Taemin, raising the bags in her right hand and shaking them a little.
“I have japchae! And gimbap too, real gimbap.”
Her voice was a little too loud, a little too clear.
Jinki winced again when the fake gimbap drove her elbows into his legs for leverage in order to prop herself up and twist around. Joohyo blinked blearily up at Haerim, balanced precariously in place thanks to her brother’s hand on her back, entirely unaware that she could roll off at any moment.
“Gimbap?” The young girl echoed.
“From the supermarket?” Jinki frowned.
“I want ddeudegi…” Joohyo mumbled through a half-stifled yawn before a thought hit her and she quickly ducked her head.
“Yah, you ungrateful brat!” Haerim snapped with half-hearted annoyance but her expression spoke of other things. Of worry and of heartache. Because the younger girl couldn’t hide everything by lowering her face, couldn’t hide the aftermath of yet another morning spent crying herself back into a dreamless state of oblivion. Haerim’s eyes moistened as she turned to her brother; her smile stretched a bit wider and a bit thinner over her teeth. “Eunyoung’s mom gave me the food.”
“Oh, Auntie Yoo?” Jinki extricated himself from Joohyo and stood up.
“She makes the best gimbap.” Haerim beamed, relinquishing the bags and the toilet paper pack when Jinki reached for them. “You guys haven’t had the chance to taste it but she would always make some for us whenever I go over to Eunyoung’s house after school. The danmuji she uses is homemade!”
“Sounds delicious.” Jinki lifted the bags still radiating slightly with the warmth of their contents.
“There’s more than enough for all of us.” Her fingertips lingered against the white plastic.
“I’ll set the food out so why don’t you get Hyo washed up and dressed? She brushed her teeth after I woke her up but refused to do anything else.” He moved out of the way so Haerim could get at Joohyo.
“Alright you lazy bum, let’s go.” The older girl opened up her arms.
Once Haerim had half ushered half towed Joohyo out of sight, Taemin finally remembered to take his other foot out of his other shoe. He shuffled a few short steps into the living room, veering uncertainly towards the kitchen before veering back and ultimately stopping altogether under Jinki’s unblinking gaze. He croaked out a timid hi.
The older boy left the food on the coffee table and Taemin tensed reflexively as the distance between them disappeared. When Jinki was but a foot away, the toilet paper pack slipped from his clutch and he abruptly keeled forward. Taemin made a harsh strangled noise in his throat and attempted to catch the falling boy.
Before his fingers could reach Jinki’s arm, however, Jinki’s forehead had already landed heavily against the crook of his neck. The older boy didn’t speak but there was something about the slope of his back that whispered, please, just a moment, so Taemin let his hand drop back to his side. Yet as soon as his heart settled back into his chest, he became aware of the slow burning pain in his left shoulder. It radiated down the length of his arm and speared across his shoulder blades, extending up his neck and winding around his throat. He wished he knew what it was, what it meant. Was it from the impact of Jinki’s head? Was it from the weight of the grocery bags?
His fingers shone white as bone but his fingertips were red enough to bleed.
Jinki took in a slow steady breath, inhaling the scent of the fine drizzle still clinging onto Taemin’s jacket. Then he let his lungs deflate until it was physically impossible to push out any more air.
“She’s a very proud person, you know.”
While Jinki was setting the table, Taemin washed up at the kitchen sink. He rubbed his fingers forcefully together, again and again, till the tingling went away; the small tremor in his left arm remained though, no matter how hard he tried to hold still. As he dried his hands on a towel, he was aware that his skin had turned a deep pink from the too-warm water-a jarring contrast to that lonely spot of aquamarine.
He held up his trembling hand, running his index finger back and forth over his thumb nail.
Much of that streak of lacquer had already chipped away.
......
The drizzle that had started on Taemin and Haerim’s way back home never turned into full out rain, so that afternoon the four of them left the apartment without umbrellas.
The hospital was thirty-three and half minutes away by foot.
Haerim led the way, refusing to stay on the sidewalk and instead balancing herself with outstretched arms on the cement curb. But I’ve got the parked cars to protect me from traffic, she had reasoned when Jinki told her to stop, I’ll get off when we get to the bigger roads. Seeing that Haerim’s stubbornness was being indulged, Joohyo wordlessly followed suit, swaying a little more than her sister. Jinki took his hands out of his pockets and walked behind them, eyes never leaving their overlapping figures, ready to catch them (or Joohyo at least) at any given moment. Taemin brought up the rear.
That was how they made their journey, single file, through the gray streets.
It was a few days after their arrival that Jinki’s mother became stable enough for the doctors to allow them more than a fleeting glance from the other side of the glass doors. She’d been placed in a six-bed room of the ICU, sharing the space with five other silently sleeping (though they all knew it wasn’t sleep) occupants. Between the beds were faded blue-green curtains, drawn on occasion for some semblance of privacy.
As they stepped into the room, the nurses were just about finished turning the patients over in their beds. The four of them bowed in greeting and the staff smiled and nodded in return. One nurse took Jinki aside for a bit and he motioned for his sisters to go on to their mother’s bedside. With a glance over his shoulder, Taemin trailed after the girls.
He had accompanied them to the hospital before but this was only the second time that he had been allowed in. The sight of the fragile woman hit him no less hard than the first time and he wasn’t sure how many visits it would take to get used to something like this. So instead of intently studying her face the way the girls did even before their took up their positions, one on either side of her, he chose to stand a little ways behind Haerim at the foot of the bed, downcast eyes finding their way to two pale unmoving hands.
They were the hands that had raised these two girls. These two girls and that one beautiful, beautiful boy.
When Jinki rejoined them, he gave Joohyo’s outstretched fingers a squeeze before answering Haerim’s inquisitive look with a reassuring smile. “The doctor wants to see me so you guys stay here. I’ll be back.”
Haerim nodded.
Joohyo hung on for a little while longer before letting him go and burying herself nose-deep in the bleached white blankets. A few minutes of silence later, Haerim drew a shuddering breath and launched into her usual monologue. For every word she spoke, she rubbed a circle into those sharp knuckles, carefully avoiding the crosshatches of angry red scabs.
Hi mom…
Jinki came back to them a little paler, but he did nothing except shake his head when Haerim asked him in a dozen different ways what was wrong. Her frown of suspicion grew deeper and deeper until at last he, without his usual gentleness, shoved her head against his chest. Leaning over her, he gripped both her hand and their mother’s.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” The sound rumbled deep in his throat. After a moment, he added: “He just wanted to update us on how mom’s doing, that’s all. She still needs the ventilator but she’s a little stronger at breathing now. That’s something to be thankful for.”
“So are they going to give her a tracheostomy? She’s still breathing on an endotracheal tube and you said that’s bad if she uses it for too long right?”
“I don’t know.” He planted a kiss atop her head, mumbling distractedly. “Maybe. Soon.”
“And the feeding tube-” She touched her own nose.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” He released her from his embrace and ruffled her hair.
“But-”
“Don’t worry, okay? The doctors and nurses know what they’re doing.” His eyes dimmed a little in spite of the words rolling off his tongue. “They’ll make sure she’s okay. They will. That’s what they’re here for. We’ve just got to trust them.”
“She’s going to be okay, right?” Her voice was suddenly thicker.
“Of course.” He brushed his thumb over hers. “Of course, of course…”
“Hey, don’t be like this. Stay optimistic; think happy thoughts. Mom's here, isn't she? So why don’t you keep talking to her, hm?” Jinki set both of his hands on Haerim’s shoulders.
She obediently complied, picking up where she had left off, outlining the world that her mother wasn’t aware of, shading in the memories that she couldn’t make-how a young couple had accidentally dropped a container of tofu and was scolded by the lady at the free sample stand, how she had picked the shortest line but ended up waiting longer than the next one over, how the man in front of her had bought seven different kinds of ramyeon and five flavors of pepero...
Taemin can never quite paint out the same picture of Jinki’s expression from that time with words, because words weren't and still aren’t enough, because he hadn't understood it right then and there. As Haerim described how the ahjumma at the cash register had been wearing a cartoon rabbit hairclip that didn’t match her age at all, Jinki’s well-schooled features crumbled into something that looked like devastation. Like the world was ending. Like he was seeing it end.
…like - maybe, possibly - he was the one ending it.
His hands slipped from Haerim’s shoulders and he clasped them behind his back, except unlike Joohyo’s on the day of the funeral, his nail beds were colorless. Even more so as he dug a neat little row of deep, deep crescents into the flesh of his palm. The younger boy didn’t understand why but slowly he reached out, his fingertips barely managing to graze Jinki’s sleeve before the older boy’s hand suddenly clamped down around his. He jumped in surprise - at the motion, at the force, at the coldness - but he quickly pulled those fingers towards himself.
It's okay, hyung.
Taemin traded words of comfort for bruises, scribbling them across the back of Jinki’s hand in a language no one knew.
It's okay. I'm here...
......
____a/n: title is weird, sorry. :x on another note, I may am going to start cutting scenes. taem possesses a little more resolve but everyone else has undergone no perceptible change. /headdesk
Don't ask why jargon ended up in this fic. Forgive my giant run-on sentences too. (A rather belated request, yes. xD)
[definitions]
잡채, 김밥. Common enough I'll assume everyone knows what they are.
뜨데기. Another name for 수제비; a soup comprising hand-torn pieces of dough, vegetables, etc. Rainy day food!
단무지. Pickled daikon radish.
Mechanical ventilation. Endotracheal (through the mouth and down the trachea) is short term; tracheostomy (through an incision in the neck/trachea) is long term.
Enteral feeding. Nasogastric (through the nose and down the esophagus) is short term; gastric (through an incision in the abdomen/stomach) is long term.
The use of long term methods facilitates maintenance, reduces damage, lowers the risk of certain complications such as pneumonia, etc.
大好きだった 大好きだった »
......
2.4 i